Without even looking a century or so ahead when we’ll take a Virgin Galactic flight to spend our summers on Europa, there are many legal issues that are already confronting humanity in space. That’s why space lawyers are plenty busy today examining the particular economic and societal challenges found where Earth ends… »6/20/15 5:00pm 6/20/15 5:00pm

Many of us dream of living on other planets, but are two things we'll need before it can actually happen: money and raw materials. Now some companies say they have a solution to this problem. They'll mine asteroids for valuable metal ores, and for basic resources like water that we'll need once we're far from Earth.»2/17/15 4:56pm 2/17/15 4:56pm

U.S. companies are eyeing asteroids as the next frontier in lucrative mining ventures. But, they say, their plans are stymied by the vague status of private ownership in space. Earlier this summer, members of Congress introduced a bill to protect property rights for commercial exploitation of asteroids. Is that legal?»8/14/14 12:00pm 8/14/14 12:00pm

Leave it to lawyers to ruin the party. Just a week after James Cameron and Google announced their plans to extract water and precious metals from nearby asteroids comes a warning from a space law expert who says the paperwork isn't quite done yet. We need to improve the legal framework, he says, before we start… »4/30/12 3:30pm 4/30/12 3:30pm

This fall's Battlestar Galactica prequel,
Caprica »8/02/08 11:00am 8/02/08 11:00am, will plunge civil rights attorney Joseph Adama into unfamiliar legal and ethical depths when he encounters the first member of the Cylonic species. Fortunately, lawyers on our planet are already considering the legal consequences of the future, toaster-laden or…

As if rampant piles of orbiting junk weren't enough, humans have now given outer space another of our finest creations: a lawyer. Obligatory lawyer joke aside, law student Michael Dodge graduated this weekend from the University of Mississippi with the first-ever (at least in the US) certificate in space law. And not… »5/13/08 10:00am 5/13/08 10:00am